Trump to attend the World Economic Forum at Davos

10 January, 2018

President Donald Trump plans to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, later this month, the White House said Tuesday, taking his economic nationalist positions on business and trade to an audience of top global leaders.

The gathering at an Alpine ski resort is a redoubt of globalist, free-trade thinking starkly at odds with Trump's worldview. President Bill Clinton was the first and last USA president to attend in person, in 2000.

The meeting features some of the biggest elites in the world, where Trump's America First agenda will likely clash with a forum dedicated to economic globalism. An administration official at the time said participating in the high-powered annual gathering in the Swiss Alps would betray the president's populist movement.

Chinese President Xi Jinping used the forum in 2017 for a global call to reject trade wars and protectionism in a rebuttal to Trump. In the past, vice presidents Dick Cheney and Joe Biden have attended.

Davos was once held up by the Trump campaign as an example of what was wrong with Hillary Clinton's Democratic party.

A year before the consensus had been that he would not win the presidency.

This would be for the first time in 18 years that a USA president would be addressing the World Economic Forum, which is an annual gathering of global economic leaders.

She said Trump wants to promote his policies for strengthening American businesses, industries and workers.

"The President's message is very much the same here as it will be there", Sanders said.